Former CIA agent says FBI railroaded her

DETROIT - Nada Prouty, the former Michigan woman who was drummed out of the CIA, prosecuted and stripped of her U.S. citizenship in 2007 because of a fraudulent marriage, says in a new book that she was railroaded by overzealous prosecutors and FBI agents in Detroit.

"They had no interest in the truth," Prouty, 41, says in Uncompromised: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of an Arab American Patriot in the CIA (Palgrave Macmillan, 282 pages, $26). She is launching a two-week nationwide tour Tuesday to promote the book.

"As a national security worker, I was an easy target," Prouty said, adding that prosecutors coerced her into pleading guilty, partly by threatening to destroy her husband's career at the State Department. She said she was a patriot who put her life on the line in the war on terror as an FBI agent and CIA officer.

Lebanese native

Born in Lebanon, Prouty came to the U.S. in 1989. She earned an accounting degree at Detroit College of Business and a master's at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania. She joined the FBI in 1999 and the CIA in 2003.

Prouty pleaded guilty in 2007 to citizenship fraud and accessing an FBI computer without authorization to get information about a Detroit-based national security investigation involving Hezbollah, which the U.S. designates as a Lebanese terrorist group.

Authorities said she may have passed the information to her brother-in-law - Detroit restaurateur Talal Chahine - who fled to Lebanon in 2005 to avoid income tax evasion charges. Prosecutors said he supports Hezbollah.

Deportation stayed

A federal judge fined her $750, but imposed no jail time or probation, and blasted prosecutors and the news media, saying Prouty had served her country with distinction.

She was also ordered deported, but her removal was put on indefinite hold to keep her from falling into terrorist hands.

The Justice Department said Monday that it "stands by the prosecution." It said she used a fraudulent marriage to obtain citizenship, jobs and security clearances at the FBI and CIA.

Prouty told the Detroit Free Press that she wrote the book to clear her name, a process that began in March 2010 with a story on CBS' 60 Minutes. Because of the story, she said the CIA, Justice Department and Department of Homeland Security made her a permanent U.S. resident.

She said she hopes to regain her citizenship and win a presidential pardon.

"The real losers in the Nada Prouty case are the American public," said her lawyer, Mark Zaid of Washington, D.C., adding that the decision to give her a green card is tantamount to an apology.

The Justice Department said it made her a permanent resident because of national security concerns.